Additions, Omissions, Errata etc - please post here

Started by Big Insect, 21 April 2019, 08:15:22 PM

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Big Insect

Thank you all for all the BKCIV feedback so far - all gratefully received and appreciated.

Please post any errata, errors or issues in the BKCIV rules and lists here.

All that has been posted to-date is being collated by Leon but if you can post anything else in this single thread that will be helpful.

Many thanks

Mark

'He could have lived a risk-free, moneyed life, but he preferred to whittle away his fortune on warfare.' Xenophon, The Anabasis

This communication has been written by a dyslexic person. If you have any trouble with the meaning of any of the sentences or words, please do not be afraid to ask for clarification. Remember that dyslexics are often high-level conceptualisers who provide "out of the box" thinking.

Dr Dave

Issues with Recce:

Recce: am I reading these right?
1.   Recce now move once on a throw of 1-4, twice on a 5 or thrice on a 6.
This means that infantry in middle-high CV armies are likely to outpace their armoured car recce.

2.   Recce cannot move and communicate
This means that they cannot drive AND use the radio whilst ALL other units can. Is it just me or has anyone else always found this a bit odd?

3.   The +1 Recce bonus
To have a +1 recce bonus the recce unit has to actually spot the enemy in LOS
So the +1 means the command unit thinks it has a clearer picture of the situation and acts with more confidence. But I think that the need to spot misses one important point about recce information: it DOES NOT have to be correct – it merely has to be BELIEVED. Hence the old rule of simply being in 60 cm of the enemy regardless of LOS meant that the recce could not only tell commanders where the enemy is, but also where he IS NOT. Line of sight should not be necessary. If they see nothing then they report that the way ahead is clear of enemy

Our group find the recce rules as they are very unwieldy and not very authentic.

Sorry...  :(

Prophaniti

Someone noticed on the Facebook page that 'Stubborn' appears in the special rules for the better Volkssturm, but has no definition in the current special rules.  (I know what it is in BKC2 and not that it has all but been removed in this edition.)

Big Insect

Recce

The Recce rules are actually a pretty direct 'lift' from what has been used for a long time (with great success) as house rules in both CWC and FWC.
Sorry to hear you guys feel it is unrepresentative.
On your specific points.

Movement:
Yes - if a recce unit on foot (Scouts) rolls a 1-4 it moves only once - however it is guaranteed a move, whereas your infantry being ordered under Command might not move at all if the Commander fails the command roll.
However, and maybe this should be stress in the errata - you can always buy transport for your foot Recce/scouts ... that is perfectly acceptable. Putting your Scouts in a jeep or truck or on horse-back will give them some additional movement and the transport unit is treated as Recce whilst their Recce passengers are on-board for movement.
However, sometimes Recce units chose not to move or got bogged down in assessing a situation etc.
In the CWC and FWC Recce house rules, the Recce moves on a d6 x movement but this was felt by many play-testers to be excessive for WW2. As you had units moving at a speed of 30cm getting a 180cm move on a d6 roll.

Recce cannot move and communicate
You are being too literal - not all armies have radios even in WW2 and very often the act of communication required the vehicle to be stationary, to observe, access, evaluate and report back.
This is primarily a mechanism to stop Recce units becoming super troops.

Line of Sight
This is a thorny subject (& a lot of conflicting views came out in the play-tests and proof reading) as there are many players who find it equally odd that a Recce unit can 'spot' a unit through a couple of BUAs, behind a hill and in a wood (I over exaggerate to make a point).
The original concept of the +1 is purely to provide a bonus to the Commander for a successful recce action. Spotting the nearest unit to the Recce and providing the +1 to the Commander are not linked - so the Commander does not have to target the enemy unit spotted (if an FAO or FAC for example) ...
Other Recce actions such as Pathfinding have been introduced to cover the benefits of providing information on "where the enemy is not".

None of the above answers probably help you much, as it is a concept that many other players/groups have been happy to accept and actually feel provides a much more realistic Recce element to the game.

Mark

'He could have lived a risk-free, moneyed life, but he preferred to whittle away his fortune on warfare.' Xenophon, The Anabasis

This communication has been written by a dyslexic person. If you have any trouble with the meaning of any of the sentences or words, please do not be afraid to ask for clarification. Remember that dyslexics are often high-level conceptualisers who provide "out of the box" thinking.

Steve J

Thanks for the thought behind the Recce rules Mark. Some bits of the new Recce rules I like, others not, mainly due to how I happen to view the role of Recce units within the game and also historically. I think a lot of these issues will simpy come down to personal preference. As with BKCII, I will 'tweak' BKCIV to suit my needs, which is fine for me but probably not for others.

Lord Kermit of Birkenhead

With the LOS thing I tend to make it logical, ie the spotter is just behind the crest line or within but close to the edge of a wood or BUA.
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Dr Dave

23 April 2019, 08:45:35 AM #6 Last Edit: 23 April 2019, 10:41:24 AM by Dr Dave
Mark, thanks for the reply and understood.

I think the radios issue is too complex too complex for BKC. Obviously scouts way ahead of your force without radios would be of little benefit and going into who has radios and who doesn't is another minefield entirely.

As for the movement issue units are likely to outpace recce - even if recce are guaranteed one move. In real operations recce would (and still do) probe miles ahead of the main force to gather information.

                    recce move             In a CV8 force units move
once                 100%                        78%
twice                 33%                          58%
thrice                 17%                         42%
four                     0                            28% (infantry would still be in the 20cm command radius)
five                      0                            14% (assumes no longer within 20 cm of command unit)

I'm not how the new system of recce movement is better than the old system of ordering them but ignoring distance modifiers?

Steve J

QuoteSo moving twice isn't too hard really for CV8's

It is when I'm rolling the die :D

sediment

Dr Dave,

Not sure how you calculated your % chances, but by my reckoning, there are 26 possible dice outcomes of success with a CV8 commander, which I make c. 72%.  The chance of rolling a 7 or less in the next round is 21 out of 36 possible outcomes, which is indeed c. 58%.  However, to succeed in the 2nd throw, you have to have passed the first roll, which is 72.22x58.33 or c. 42%.  The chance of rolling 3rd and 4th orders falls to 17.5% and 4.9% quite quickly and is less than 0.9% for success of 5 orders in a single activation.  The special rolls of double 1 giving two orders increases the odds slightly, however, the odds would fall rapidly if the units kept moving as they would rapidly move out of command radius and thus suffer further minus one modifiers per 20cm.  So your table should look more like that below, but this does not take into account the command radius reduction, which would significantly reduce these odds.  Note the table doesn't compare like with like as the recce is based on a single roll, while the CV8 is based on cumulative chances of success on successive rolls.

Min no of moves         recce move     CV8 force move
1                               66%               72%
2                               16.67%           42%
3                               16.67%           17.5%
4                               0                     4.9%
5                               0                     0.8%

Recce units, as far as I recollect, don't have to be deployed within command radius and can be positioned as the player likes, within certain scenario-driven deployment limits, so there is an incentive to get them forward from the deployment, so they can start scouting from the off, rather than force them to slog across the table.

Hope this helps.

Cheers, Andy

Big Insect

Thanks Dr Dave

Personally I have always liked the roll a d:6 and move that multiple of the Recce's movement in a move approach. However, the play-testers were all but unanimous that in BKC that was far too far. But by all means I'd be interested in your groups views if you adopted that approach as a trial.

There was  lot of discussion about whether in certain armies foot scouts had to report back via signal flags or even communicate with the nearest unit with a radio ... but thereby lies madness IMHO.

On the CV8 no move thing ... I agree with Steve J I've lost too many games where I cannot roll anything under a 9 for toffee!

But as I say I'm always open to feedback and to hear how things work out.

Cheers
Mark
'He could have lived a risk-free, moneyed life, but he preferred to whittle away his fortune on warfare.' Xenophon, The Anabasis

This communication has been written by a dyslexic person. If you have any trouble with the meaning of any of the sentences or words, please do not be afraid to ask for clarification. Remember that dyslexics are often high-level conceptualisers who provide "out of the box" thinking.

Dr Dave

Quote from: sediment on 23 April 2019, 10:55:24 AM
Not sure how you calculated your % chances

I used the wrong way! I forgot the dependency issue.

But normal nits should still outpace normal recce with the same move. That just cannot be right in any system - recce being so slow that that get left behind? Panzers outpacing the 222's!

IF it's important that they don't need to be ordered then I'd have gone

die score   moves
1                 0 (just for the botheration factor!)
2                 1
3                 1
4                 2 
5                 2
6                 3 (recce should be able to range far and wide ahead of the main force - it DID and it still does)

Ithoriel

For me the recce rules just work.

They don't model real world processes but they give an effect I recognise from my reading around the subject.

Seems to me that getting the right result for the wrong reasons is the very essence of the Warmaster based rules.

Infinitely preferable to the reverse IMHO.
There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

Prophaniti

A small erratum this time.
Fanatics special rule appears as fanatical in the lists.

Not a huge difference,  but I wanted to bring it up just in case it was more important than it seems.

sediment

Dr Dave,

I've been playing the modified rules in CWC, that Mark refers to, for years.  This is where recce roll a d6 and can make that many moves.  It feels right to me, even for WW2 for the reasons you give, i.e. recce should be galloping out in front doing their thing - even in WW2 they were ranging across the battle area.  As they are units that can be fired at, that was always the rate determiner - the thought that if they stick their nose out of the wood they will be shot up is quite a good control on how far they range in front - personally, I would have disagreed with the more vocal group of playtesters that have required the reduction in movement.  However, the command radius modifier does mean that regular units very quickly run out of orders if they try and range too far ahead.  That is really my criticism of the new recce support rule.  As it stands, recce support can't really support recce units as, if I've read it correctly, they need to stay in command radius.  This means your AEC can't add the weight of its fire protection to support the recce Dingo, which doesn't feel right.  For my money, recce roll of d6 and get that many moves and the old recce support rules were the best solution to recce - we even modified the recce support rule from BKCII for CWC!

Cheers, Andy

Lord Kermit of Birkenhead

Erm - Desert Storm the Armoured Rgts complained that the recce were slowing them down.

Very minor complaint - the use of Bren Carrier after 1940, they were Universals after that date,  and Bren, Scout or Cavalry carriers on or before.

IanS
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